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Basic Idea And Major Theories

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Basic Idea and Major Theorists
According to the social learning theory, the reason people commit crime is because of the social groups they interact with. While attracting with these groups, individuals can learn the lifestyles of these groups and also learn whether to commit crimes or not depending on the amount of interactions with these groups and the intensity of those interactions. The basic idea of the author in the article is why people become stoopers and according to John Rosecrance, people become stoopers because it provides them an income with which they can survive. Another reason individuals become stoopers is because they are on their own and don’t have to answer to anyone in a higher position than them. For example, they don’t …show more content…

They learn the criminal acts from other criminal groups like gangs or from other experienced criminals and they accept the criminal acts depending on the amount of exposure they receive. The learning process involves the individuals learning the techniques to use, attitudes to have towards the crimes, motives of the crime, and rationalizations. The theory also states that learning criminal behavior and non-criminal behavior is the same process, it just depends on the amount of criminals or non-criminals you interact with on a daily basis, which decides whether or not you commit criminal acts (Shvarts, PP Pg 20-27). In the article the author applies the social learning theory to explain why people become stoopers by discussing how the 4 aspects of differential association apply to stoopers. The first aspect is “priority of learning” which basically means how early in life are individuals exposed to criminal behavior (Shvarts, PP Pg 11-30). For example, in the case of stoopers this can be learned at school because we often see these situation in schools, when someone losses or drops something they often don’t get it back and who ever finds it often keeps it and that’s what stoopers do at race tracks. The second aspect is “frequency” which means how often individuals are exposed to or participate in groups that encourage criminal …show more content…

The author uses different parts of the social learning theory to explain in detail what causes individuals to become stoopers. For example, the author interviewed professional stoopers to find out what caused them to become stoopers and then analyzed the data using the social learning theory. The authors approach was effective because he was able to figure out how individuals learn to become stoopers and why stoopers think it’s okay to commit the crimes they

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